by Ruth Wind
Robert, Robert, Robert. His name sung over her nerves, down her spine and the backs of her thighs.
She turned and caught sight of herself in the long mirror over the sink.
And just that fast, her mood plummeted, so fast and so far that it felt as if she were falling off a cliff. Because the body she saw in the mirror was not one she wanted him to see. The arms were still too big. The breasts were not as high as she wished. But the worst was her belly—too soft, still too much of it.
She thought of him sitting across the table tonight in his white shirt, his body hard and lean and muscular. She could only imagine how perfect he looked without his clothes. How could she bear the mortification of having to be naked with him?
Idiotic thoughts. She closed her eyes. She'd been naked in the past with men who were in much better shape than she. But in those days, it had been a what - you - see - is - what - you - get proposition—her last boyfriend had definitely liked her extra weight. A lot of men did.
But now she looked a lot better with her clothes on than she did with them off. He might be expecting something completely different. He might not—
The doorbell rang.
Victoria! Marissa laughed. Grabbing her robe from the hook, she turned off the water and scrambled down the stairs. It was just like her sister to show up early as a surprise, and with a broad smile, she yanked open the door.
For a moment, she only stared. In all of her life, she had never been wrong on this. She knew when Victoria was on the phone. She could feel her when she was close by.
But it was not Victoria on her porch. It was Robert.
An almost visible aura of tense heat surrounded him, taut and orange, and just the sight of him made the little hairs on her body stand up, every single one, at solid attention. She had one second to remember a flash of his hand on her breast, his mouth on her neck, the thick heat of his sex below her hand.
Then he pulled open the screen, stepped in, turned, closed the door behind him and pushed her against it. "I could have been a murderer," he said roughly, and then bent and kissed her.
And it was like the first time they kissed—a pure, wild, deep explosion of sexual connection. She opened to him completely, taking fistfuls of that hair into her hands and pulling it around her. His hands cupped her buttocks hard, hauling her close. Marissa arched into him in a blistering swell of lust, pressing her breasts against his chest, her belly against his rigid sex. There was nothing in her mind but a sense of utter starvation, of pointed, clear need.
Robert.
In her.
Now.
There was nothing elegant about it. "Condom?" she whispered against his mouth, reaching for his belt buckle.
"Front … left … pocket," he said, pulling open the top of her robe. Air struck her breasts a millisecond before the heat of his hands covered them, and it was so intensely exactly what she wanted that she squeezed her eyes tight for a moment, then stuck her hand in his pocket, closed it on the slippery packets and pulled one out. Safe.
She went back to the belt and zipper, fumbling with it as she kissed him, sucked at his mouth. His hand slid between them and Marissa shifted a little to give him access, biting a little on his lip when his fingers slid home. She let go of a small, tight cry at the sensation of it, hurrying to free him, to touch him, the silky, rigid flesh of his sex leaping into her palm. For a blind space of moments, their hands and bodies collided, breath and skin brushing. Marissa struggled with the condom, tearing at the package with her teeth, and covered him.
With a groan, he suddenly lifted her, and Marissa felt a shock of pleasure at this evidence of his strength, the power of his body. She met his urgency with her own, bracing herself on his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his waist, a faint thought in her mind that she'd done it many times, many ways, but no man had been able to lift her like this against a wall before. But then he grasped her hips in those wide hands, and he plunged.
They both let go of a guttural, amazed cry at the power of it, and halted for one instant, looking in shock at each other, but it was too late to change anything now, and there was so much force of need in Marissa that she wouldn't have let him go anyway. She kissed him, feeling a wild pulse of reaction to the thrust of his tongue and his organ, all together in a violence of need that thrilled and terrified and aroused her. She found herself coming apart too quickly, shattering in completion. A low, deep moan of pleasure escaped her, and she bent forward, biting at his long throat as the waves shook her, then him, his body going still and rigid as he pressed her hard against the door.
"Marissa," he whispered, panting, and pressed his forehead against her neck.
"Don't think," she murmured fiercely, her hands and arms trembling in reaction. "This is now, this is us, that's all."
His body, too, was trembling, and she eased away, put her feet down. He was far more dressed than she, and she pulled her robe together a little, but he caught her hand, and pushed it away. "That night I was here before," he said softly, his hand raising to clasp her breast in one palm, "you were wearing a little blue bra. I've been dying ever since to see—" he looked down "—this." His thumb grazed her nipple, and then he bent and kissed it. Lightly.
His loose hair fell around his shoulders like a cape, so dark and silky and thick, and she put her palm flat on it, a shivery kind of wonder echoing through her. "Robert," she whispered, just to say it aloud.
He straightened, looking down at her gravely, putting his hands on her face, then shook his head and pressed his brow against hers. "I keep wanting to say I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me. But that would sound like I want to leave, and I don't, unless you want me to."
"No," she whispered.
"Take me upstairs."
And Marissa thought again of her body, revealing it to him. "Robert, I'm not … I…"
A quizzical expression. "What?"
"I don't look that great without my clothes on."
His smile was so tender it pierced her. "Neither do I," he said. "It's not about what anything looks like, is it?" He curled his hand around her neck, touched his lips to hers lightly. "It's about how it feels."
"I have candles," she offered.
"Candles are good." He reached behind her, turned the dead bolt and tugged her hand. "Show me."
* * *
He should have been less anxious after that wild scene at the door—what got into him?—but a tangled sense of nervous anticipation moved in him as they went up the stairs. This was insane. He should never have come back.
And every step convinced him that much more. The elegance of details in her house. The richly padded carpet under his feet, the delicate lace curtains, even the sight of her pink-and-white feet—all of it made him feel like an imposter, an interloper. The peasant with the princess.
But the other part of him—the part that had insisted he had to come back—wanted her too badly to even consider leaving. A pool of anticipation stirred in his belly as she led him into her bedroom and let his hand go. It was a big room, with five or six windows, and a four-poster bed, just as he'd imagined. She moved, picking up a book of matches to light candles on the mantle and windowsills and dresser. He waited, watching her self-conscious movements—the quick tightening tug she gave the tie to her robe, the restless brush of her hands through her hair.
And he suddenly realized that everything about her would be revealed when she took off that robe. He knew a lot more about her than she knew about him.
He settled on a tiny, chintz-covered chair and bent to untie his boots. "My mother," he said, "had me when she was fifteen. She was lost, even then."
He let the left boot fall, started on the other. "She had drug problems, man problems, problems that got worse and worse and worse." The right boot. "When I was fourteen, one of her boyfriends kicked my ass for talking back to her, and I'd just had enough. I ran away from home, lived in the streets for two years."
She listened through all this, her hands tight on the tie
s of her robe. Standing, he unbuttoned the front of his shirt. "In those days," he said gruffly, feeling the tension even in the confession, "we marked ourselves." He took off his shirt and let it drop, watching her face carefully. "I marked myself."
Whatever she was thinking didn't show, not right away. She moved closer, her face unreadable, and touched his wrist first, the bracelet of Celtic knots she touched before. Then her finger tips moved to his left biceps, where a gangland tattoo sprawled in ugly blue ink. "So many," she said softly. She trailed her fingers over his arms, his chest, his belly, brushing each one, the violent marks and the sorrowful ones, the declarations and the wounds.
At last, she bent close, and pressed a kiss to his chest, to the stylized cross there. When she raised her eyes, there were tears in them, and he shook his head.
"It was a long time ago." He reached for her. "Come lie down with me, Marissa."
"Fair is fair," she said, and stepped back, still so desperately reluctant that it broke his heart. She reached for the ties of her robe and, with a quick intake of breath, let it fall.
A jolt of purest, deepest lust burned through him, but he forced himself to be still, let her see him looking, seeing, liking. "Do you know how erotic your coloring is?" he said, and urgently skimmed out of his jeans, so they were both standing naked in the candlelight, revealed. She had touched his tattoos, and in return, he knelt and pressed his mouth against her full, soft lower belly, put his hands on the love handles that still lingered, that did not show when she was dressed. He spread open his palms and traveled over thighs that would never be slender, then stood up. "Come to bed, princess," he said.
They tumbled together, tangling naked limbs that slid and explored along with hands and mouths and eyes. He closed his eyes to feel the press of her belly against his own, the plush, incredible softness of breasts against his ribs. "Oh," he breathed, "that's good, that's good." He curled his hands around her buttocks, traced the length of her spine.
And she, too, explored, careful not to hit him with her cast, learning the shape of his body, the taste of his skin. The low roar of desire in him grew higher, hotter, and he pushed her gently onto her back and started at her mouth, kissing her lips, her chin, her throat. She made a low sound, and moved restlessly as he moved lower. "I need—oh!" His hair fell in a rush, all at once, over her chest, and she reached up to touch the hair, her own flesh, and a bolt of something unbelievable went through him, a flash point of electricity. He touched his tongue to her lips, to her breasts, and her uncasted hand moved to his organ, urgently but lightly touching him, guiding him, urging him.
And this time they went slowly. Rolling easily into a thick, deep rhythm that pulsed through his entire body, through hers, and he knew it was corny even as he thought it—that it was almost musical. Such a long, easy, slow movement, one that let them touch and kiss and more than he would have expected—look. Candlelight flickered over her face, across the vividness of those blue eyes, across her red lips that he couldn't resist dipping to taste, again and again.
He was lost and he knew it, lost in a sweetness and warmth he had not ever been able to hold on to and had learned to stop wanting. So much easier, so much safer to make do with what was than to want so much. Even as he supped at the wonder of her, he knew he shouldn't have come back, but as she reached for him, urgently, gasping his name as she kissed him, hard, and climaxed, he couldn't be sorry.
* * *
Marissa felt her body, every single part of her body—her toes and her mouth and her knees—sailing back from wherever it had gone. She grew conscious of the intimacy of their bellies and chests, sweaty and slick, pressed together, heard again the sound of his breath in her ear. How many ears had he breathed in this way?
A sense of shyness, strangeness, came over her, an almost panicked sense of realization—she was naked, with a man she really didn't know well, and what had she done? Why had she done it?
As if he felt her stiffening, his arms tightened on either side of her and he lifted his head. "Just us, remember," he said. But Marissa closed her eyes, avoiding his gaze, mortification rising into her cheeks, tipping the edges of her ears. The flesh pressed against him felt prickly all of a sudden, uncomfortable. She could not move, could barely breathe.
"Marissa," he said, that raspy voice, too familiar in contexts that had nothing to do with this—
She squeezed her eyes tighter, acutely, painfully aware that they were naked—totally naked—that she could feel intimate parts of him still tight against her, could feel her naked breasts against his chest—
Oh, what had she done?
She could feel him looking at her, felt the faint drawing away, and wanted to both hold him tighter and shove him away at once. She wasn't sure if she was crushed or relieved when he rolled away, falling on his back beside her.
Marissa reached for the sheet and pulled it over her body, over his, still not looking at him. In the gulf of silence, she could hear a faint drip of water in the bathtub, the faint sizzle of a candle. She wanted to say something, but not a word rose to her aid, and still the quiet—unbreakable, a huge breach—lay between them, vast as a desert. She curled into the pillow, stared hard at the carved wooden post at the foot of the bed. The room smelled of vanilla.
Abruptly he moved. Sat up. "Well, I guess this was a big mistake." With a jerk, he reached for his jeans. "I'll get out of your hair."
And still the horror of so completely revealing herself was on her. Wild sex at the door, and he had now seen her completely naked, head to toe—
She risked a glance at him, at his rigid, long back, sienna- and smooth-skinned and tense. His hair hid most of a tattoo on his shoulder blade, but not all of the scars. A thin, almost invisible one, low on his ribs—a knife wound. So close to his lung—she thought of that thin, brutal blade finding a target and his blood spilling out before he got here, to this night, with her.
Without realizing she meant to do it, Marissa put out a hand, pressed her palm to the edges of the howling coyote tattooed on his shoulder blade. "You didn't get this one in the streets."
His body was rigid, flinching when she touched him. "No. Texas. In the army."
In one fluid movement, she left behind the protection of the sheet and pressed her body against his back, her arms around his shoulders. "I'm sorry," she whispered into his hair. "I panicked."
A very slight softening went through him, but he didn't move. Marissa knew a moment of sharp regret. She moved her hands, touched his jaw, felt the strong, sharp angle of his cheekbones. She pressed her forehead against the back of his head, breathing in the scent of some faintly peachy shampoo, and realized he'd probably let Crystal pick it out.
He caught her hands, pulled them down like a scarf around his chest. A quiet sigh, then he lifted her hands and pressed them to his mouth. "I've gotta go. This is—ah. It's not what I thought."
Hollow, Marissa pulled away, shamed and burning and wanting—what? For him to leave, now. For him to turn and kiss her again, make her forget, lose herself in that blazing lust that made it easy. She had no idea which she wanted more, and only fell back, pulling the heavy comfort of the quilt over herself, watching him in the candlelit room.
When he stood to dress, she saw the lean, long ropiness of his body. He kept his back to her, but moving, liquid shadows revealed more than they hid—the small bones of his spine, a row of tiny mountains; the hollow of his hip joint against high flanks; male flesh, dark and soft, at the base of his flat belly. He moved quickly, and the flesh was covered by shorts, hidden by jeans.
In her body was a rhythm of silent protest and relief in alternating beats—a pulse between her legs, a pound in her chest, a swell in her breasts, a cringe in her mind. She could not look at him while he buttoned his shirt, pulling the sleeve down over the long scar that ran along his inner arm, and put the covers over her face. All was silent, still, where moments ago, it had been roaring, loud, the air feverish with passion and satisfaction and discovery.
> She felt him sink onto the bed at her side, felt his hand on the top of her head. He pulled down the thick quilt. Marissa didn't move, just waited for him to say whatever kind, parting words he'd decided to utter.
But she waited and waited and he said nothing, only sat there next to her, clothed when she was not. And he proved more steadfast than she. In the end, she turned, almost in defiance, without worrying how much of her showed. "I thought you were leaving."
"Me, too," he said gruffly, and pulled the cover over the top half of her breasts, moved his hand over her shoulder, a gentle movement she nearly could not bear. "This was a big mistake, princess, but we can't let Crystal know anything."
"I know that." To forestall anything else, she sighed. "Robert, you already said it, okay? This was a mistake. Let's just leave it at that."
He took his hand away and stood up. "When are you going to realize that life's going to be a lot easier for you when you just find yourself some senator's son and accept who you are?"
With a swift, furious gesture, she tore a pillow from beneath her and flung it at him. "When are you going to realize this is not about that?"
He caught the pillow easily, and tossed it gently back. "Isn't it?"
He left her.
* * *
Robert had forgotten to leave a light on when he left, and his house was dark when he returned to it. The porch lay in deep, flickering shadows cast by the streetlight shining on pine trees. No lamp burned in the living room window. No music made the walls breathe, no movie flickered blue against the curtains.
He sat in the truck for a long moment, dreading those empty rooms. He missed Crystal. He hadn't wanted her to stay at Louise's, didn't really know why she had insisted that was what she needed, but he also hadn't known how to protest. Didn't even know if it would have been the right thing to do. Maybe Louise was just better at taking care of her than he was. Maybe Crystal needed a mother figure.
And that was okay. He didn't need to be the only person in her life. He hadn't had much experience with kids, especially one as vulnerable as this.
